[Presentation of information for the diagnostic-therapeutic decision of the psychiatrist].

So far, little systematic work had been done to investigate how information regarding psychiatric cases should best be presented in order to facilitate important medical decisions. For each of three groups of diseases: (a) schizophrenic reaction, paranoid, (b) manic-depressive, depressed, and (c) anxiety neurosis, we have described four different cases, systematically varying both quantitatively and qualitatively the information in each description. Categorical judgement was given by 15 psychiatrists on a nine-step rating scale with regard to three dimensions. In order to investigate the constancy of the judgements, the method of scaled pair comparisons was used according to the law of comparative judgement. After examination of the adequacy of the scaling models, the following results, among others, were obtained from the scale scores: the discrimination of the two cases of psychoses was highly significant, that of the anxiety neurosis was not significant.